1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for discharging a liquid material containing a functional material, a method for manufacturing a color filter that uses this discharge method, and a method for manufacturing an organic EL element.
2. Related Art
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2003-159787 discloses one known example of a method for discharging a liquid material containing a functional material, which is a method for discharging a liquid material containing a color filter material onto a substrate to manufacture a color filter.
In the aforementioned color filter manufacturing method, a plurality of droplet discharge heads having a plurality of nozzles capable of discharging a liquid material as droplets are made to face a substrate so that the nozzle rows are arranged in a specific direction. A method is used in which a liquid material is not discharged from nozzles (unused nozzles) positioned at specific areas at the ends of the nozzle rows, and the substrate and droplet discharge heads are moved correspondingly with respect to each other while the liquid material is appropriately discharged from nozzles (used nozzles) onto specific positions on the substrate to form a color filter. The liquid material is thereby discharged in a more uniform manner, because the liquid material is discharged without using nozzles that are positioned at specific areas at the ends of the nozzle rows and that discharge comparatively large amounts.
However, in practice there have been discrepancies between nozzles in regard to the amount of droplets discharged from the plurality of nozzles in the droplet discharge heads. When these discrepancies are large, irregularities occur in the thin film formed after discharge, and if the product is a color filter, for example, the problem of color irregularities has been encountered.
One possible example of the cause of discrepancies in the discharged amount between nozzles is so-called electrical crosstalk, in which a drive voltage is irregular when applied to energy generation element (e.g., a piezoelectric element, a heating element, or the like) for discharging the liquid material as droplets from the nozzles. Another possible example is so-called mechanical crosstalk, in which the pressure or speed of droplet discharge is different between nozzles due to differences in the flow channels via which the liquid material is supplied to the nozzles.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 10-193587 discloses one known example of a method for preventing the occurrence of this type of crosstalk, which is an inkjet printing method in which different drive waveforms are inputted for adjacent nozzles, (energy generation element) and the energy generation element are driven at different times.